In the game, players take part in illegal street races across Most Wanted's setting, utilizing a variety of licensed real-world cars (available at the time of the game's development and release) that can be upgraded and customized with new parts while contending with the involvement of the police in their efforts to impede the player. Racing events feature a mixture of competitive racing across circuit or point-to-point races, and checkpoint, sprint and drag races. The game features three modes of play - Career, Quick Race, and Challenge Series - with a fourth mode allowing for multiplayer being available to players on certain console editions. While many of the racing events feature those used in previous entries in the games, particularly the Underground set of games, some events - Drifting, Street X, Underground Racing League tournaments and Outrun - are absent from Most Wanted, and replaced with two new ones.
The first event is Tollbooth, a checkpoint-styled solo race, in which players must hit a set of checkpoints, each one within a set amount of time; reaching a checkpoint quickly adds the time left over to the timer for the next checkpoint.
The second event is Speedtrap, in which players compete in a competitive checkpoint race, and must hit each checkpoint at their fastest speed; upon crossing the finishing line, each checkpoint's total speed is accumulated to determine the winner. Speed accumulated by the player or opponent gets deducted by 10 km/hr after an opponent crosses the finish line first; this is signified by intermittent flashing on-screen until the player (or the other opponent cars) crosses the finish line.
The game features a selection of stock cars to choose from, each of which can be modified during the game's career mode with upgrades to enhance its performance and visual appearance. Customization of the car's appearance is limited; the main emphasis of customization is to reduce the car's heat level rather than for reputation as in the Underground series - while some elements that were possible in the previous installments were removed, others received minor changes such as players being able to make use of whole body kits on cars, the use of only one vinyl for the vehicle, and exterior colours being limited to the car's main body, wheels and window tinting. Additional cars are available for the player to use - most of which are acquired from the game's Blacklist Racers or unlocked after defeating a Blacklist Racer, while others are bonuses available from completing challenges; a number of cars available in the game are exclusives added in by the Black Edition copy of the game. Police cars cannot be driven in the game, except during special events in the game's Challenge Series mode. Most Wanted, like the Underground series, avoids the use of major vehicle damage on all racing models, with only scratched paint and heavily cracked windshields constituting the whole of the racers' damage modelling. Police cars, on the other hand, sustain heavy damage when hit by the player's car or caused by the player to crash into other cars or obstacles.
During races and the game's Career mode, players can make use of Nitrous Boosts to help give them an edge against opponents. Unlike in Underground, which first introduced the gameplay mechanic, Nitrous Boosts recharge over time, thus allowing the player to re-use it when needed. Players can use a second ability to help out in tough situations called "Speedbreaker" - when used, the ability slows down time (similar to bullet time), induces drift and momentarily increase the weight of the player's vehicle to make it harder to be pushed around, thus allowing players to maneuver their vehicle out of a difficult situation.